Reviews: October 2006 Archives
Before I begin the rant, I should start positive. I'm very much into the "Web 2.0" thing. Sure, there's too much hype, but when done right it can be a wonderful thing. Flickr and YouTube do it perfectly. They make the "social web" easy. MySpace certainly qualifies for 2.0 status based on its social nature. It also has something very important going for it: critical mass. A site revolving completely around user-created content can't survive if it doesn't have any users, and MySpace certainly has that down, even if millions of its users are duplicate accounts and fake profiles created by porn sites.
My biggest complaint against MySpace is the complete lack of attention to the user interface, and I mean that on all levels. First there is the overall graphic design of the site, or lack thereof. Even the parts of the site not customizable by users are just horribly ugly. But it's so much deeper than that. It's not just a matter of negligent typography and a bad color scheme. The whole layout is remarkably unintuitive. Indeed, the entire user experience is just awful.
You go to a profile page and click on the link to see more pictures. You have to sign in. You just signed in half an hour ago? Who cares? Do it again. I understand security concerns, but on a computer that isn't ever shared, shouldn't I at least be able to stay signed in perpetually? It's not like MySpace is a bank; nothing that bad can possibly happen. Just let me stay signed in and ask for my password only if I want to change some important account settings. That's the sensible thing. Or, at the very least, don't put adult ads on the sign-in page. That's just good manners. (The real Web 2.0 way to do it would be an AJAX sign-in box that shows up in the page when needed, completely eliminating a separate sign-in page.) Also, frequently when I sign in after clicking a link to view profile pictures, I'm just taken straight to my profile page, and have to hit the back button to get where I want. Sloppy code.
Even though the official MySpace design elements are bad, the individual profile pages are indescribably worse. I remember, with embarrassment, back when I had a tacky Angelfire page. Unfortunately MySpace takes that level of tacky to entirely new levels. Gigantic (and busy) background images? Go for it. Just make sure you put your text in boxes with clear backgrounds, so you can easily see the page background. You want to read the text? Why bother? Bizarrely sized fonts rule the day, along with pale and/or neon colors. I mean, you've got a color screen, right? Black on white is so printing press. Also making a return from the Hellish nascent days of the web are animated GIFs, frequently with sparkly text and other garish delights.
But the worst offense, and one for which MySpace is directly responsible is auto-playing music. News flash: I've got iTunes running ... all the time. I'm already listening to music, and I don't want some other music to suddenly start playing and interrupting the selections from my carefully culled library. If I want to hear something I'll hit "play." Instead, I'm forced to search for "stop," and I want to place emphasis on "search." Due to the customizability of a user's profile, elements can appear in seemingly random locations.
My last objection is one that has grown considerably in the past couple of months. Now, every time I visit MySpace, usually to delete spurious friend requests, I am deluged with even more requests. I get add requests from 18 or 19 year old "bisexual" females in the Dallas/Forth Worth Metroplex on a regular basis. I'll visit MySpace, sign in, deny the requests, and promptly leave. Shortly later, I'll have a half-dozen requests. I especially love when I see multiple profiles with the same picture, and very different stats.
